New standards for web-based communication are providing improved ways to distribute web page content between a client and a server. System integrators and developers desire to leverage these new standards to realize the benefits of bi-directional, full duplex communication between a web browser and web server. Full duplex communication enables a client and server to simultaneously send and receive messages between each other. Such communication offers a distinct advantage over existing web-based communication protocols, such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which involves opening and closing a connection in conjunction with each request for information from a client to a server. Such communication restricts simultaneous communication and introduces latency. Contrast this with full duplex communication in which a channel remains open after it is established therefore allowing two-way communication to occur with minimal latency.
Full duplex communication can be socket-based. Socket-based communication enables content to be sent and received between a client and server over a single Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket. An example of socket-based communication is the WebSocket protocol. The WebSocket protocol, which is being developed as part of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) 5 standard, enables full duplex communication between a web browser and a web server to send and receive web page content over a WebSocket channel. To enable faster and more efficient distribution of web content over a full duplex communication channel, it is desirable to serialize the web content. Certain serialization formats such as ActionScript Message Format (AMF), however, are not presently available for web page content that is defined by certain script-based code, such as JavaScript.